Humanizing B2B Marketing [Podcast]

Carol Meyers
CMO, Rapid7

This week’s episode – 023: Carol Meyers

December 5, 2018

Carol Meyers, CMO of Rapid7, joins the show to talk humanism and how to bring it into your marketing. How are you helping buyers? When it comes to creating a more emotive experience for your customers, think about where your expertise shines through, and bring it to the forefront.

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Show details and highlights

► (2:10) The importance of being human in B2B marketing

► (4:56) B2B buyers are putting a lot at stake.

► (8:44) The role of marketing in B2B

► (12:20) Storytelling: a long-standing human tradition to help people grasp concepts

“#Storytelling is a long-standing human tradition & arose to help people grasp very complicated concepts, ” says @CarolJMeyers CLICK TO TWEET

Make an emotional connection

Bringing emotion and humanism to B2B is as or even more important than B2C. Your customers don’t necessarily need someone to answer basic questions. Often, they want to talk with an expert about creative ways to use software or to explore how successful brands have used it.

Understand why customers want to communicate with you. Most times, it’s not to get a quote on software. Share your perspective on the market — whether that’s on cryptocurrency or bitcoin, cybersecurity, AI, or something else. Storytelling is at the core of B2B — people want to tie their brand to the vision of what you stand for.

“What’s happening in marketing is happening in many spheres. Two powerful things are happening at the same time. One is that analytics and automation (the machine) is coming into force in a very big way. Most of us are not selling a high-end good that only five people are going to buy. Yet, we need to be able to communicate with buyers, users, and advocates in a way that appeals to emotion, lets them know that we understand them, but feels very personal. This is where analytics, automation, and machines come into play. They let us take the power of that knowledge in an automated, efficient, and scalable way have 1-to-1 relationships with people. The human informs the machine. We’re using analytics/automation to do things that feel more personal at scale — allowing us to take our human interactions and make them of the highest value for customers.”

“#Analytics & #automation allow us to have 1-to-1 relationships of the highest value for customers,” says @CarolJMeyers CLICK TO TWEET

Carol Meyers • Chief Marketing Officer, Rapid7

Lindsay’s key takeaways

Regardless of what industry you’re in or what products you’re selling, it’s all about building valuable relationships, meaningful connections, and serving as a trusted guide for the buyer.

Use storytelling to give your audience something to believe in. That comes down to content, brand messaging, how, when, why, and where you’re delivering value to your audience so that you position your brand as that helpful resource.

Carol’s company, Rapid7, is all about cyber security for businesses. For some of us, that might not feel like a high-emotion, highly story-centric company. But that’s not so. She and her team are able to appeal to emotions by discussing what could happen if security isn’t prioritized. Rapid7 embraces stories and emotions — and you can too!

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